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Fl>LWRSF>April 6-8, 2013 circuit hike

My approach to this one is to pack as light as possible and leave the Dutch ovens at home! This would be a circuit hike of the Arbuckle tract at Lake Wales Ridge State Forest, near Frostproof, FL.

We can park on School Bus road near the bridge over Livingston Creek (the usual spot). I will arrive Friday afternoon around 4:00 PM.

Depending upon how many people want to go, we could do one of two things. If just a few are interested, we could make Friday night's camp by the Lakeside campsite (Lake Arbuckle) and Saturday night at Grave Island, these being the smaller sites. If there's a gang of us we can camp the first night at Sherper hang spot and the second night at Isabell Creek campsite.

So, Friday afternoon we hike to the 1st campsite. Saturday morning we break camp and hike to our 2nd campsite. I will stick to the scenic trails with a definite stop by the old cypress trees and another one at Lake Godwin to cool our toes and probably eat lunch. Sunday, we hike out to the cars via the new hiker bridge over Livingston Creek.

Basically we are hiking from one watering source to another (can you say "Happy Camper") so bring your filters but leave the gallon jugs at home.

Let's see how many hikers we have and then we will make the final pick on whether we need the larger sites or can use the smaller ones.

there is a pretty good chance that I'll be able to go. Do you know what the milage is roughly going to be?

Ballpark numbers based on sketching where I think the trails are on Google Earth... Friday 2ish miles, Saturday 6-7ish miles (we can probably trim .5-1 mile off of that if we need to), Sunday 3ish miles. These are very rough numbers since they really aren't necessarily on the trail and don't account for zigzagging.

Here is my rough sketch map with red being Friday, blue Saturday and pink Sunday. It is based on staying at Lakeside campsite and Isabel campsite (I think that is probably what we should go with). We can fit plenty of people at Lakeside (MAD777 gets dibs on the trees along the lake if he wants) and Grave Island really needs to be a group of 3-4 tops so it is a smidge small for anything but a very small group.

I will most likely be in for this one. I'll be doing a shakedown hike/camp on Monday/Tuesday of next week to see if my back is up to it. Assuming I'm good to go then I should be able to make it. If I pass then you guys will be fine without me (I'll make sure that you have all of the maps/directions/gps points that you need).